The Trick is to Keep Breathing
by liftedlorax
Summary: But now it's their house. The three of them. LV futurefic.


**Title:** The Trick is to Keep Breathing  
**Author:** Allie  
**Pairing/Characters:** Logan/Veronica, Keith, Mac, Dick, Wallace  
**Word Count:** 4,804  
**Rating:** R  
**Summary: **But now it's their house. The three of them. L/V future fic.

**Spoilers/Warnings:** All aired episodes, though nothing too big—it's set in the future, like, 5 years after canon. Also, language, and mentions of sex.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own any rights to Veronica Mars or the characters. Please don't sue me.

**A/N: **Um, fluff, anyone? Also with a side order of angst. Cause it wouldn't be me if it wasn't angsty, heh. Also, there might be two more fics in the works that are related to this one, I have plans for them. Hope you like.

She likes how small and cute their house is. Their house now, not just his. Logan bought it towards the end of their second year at Hearst. Veronica didn't move into it until the middle of their last year at Hearst. And even then, she still considered it Logan's house, partly. It was easier to deal with like that.

But now it's their house. The three of them.

It only has two bedrooms, which isn't something that Logan's used to. It has a big kitchen and a big living room, which he is used to. They don't have a dining room; they usually eat in the living room, which is a habit Veronica's trying to break, due to Lucy's newfound love for grabbing food off their plates and hurling it at the carpet. Logan thinks it's utterly hilarious every time she does this, so when he winds up with a face full of spaghetti, he knows it's not Lucy throwing it; Veronica's smirk tells all.

The house is easy to clean and take care of, so Veronica doesn't let Logan hire a housekeeper, which he pouts about for a week. He stops pouting long enough to try and convince her to wear a hot maid's outfit. She obliges only once, and not for very long, because then Lucy wakes up for her midnight scream session and they have to go jump through hoops to get her to shut up. Jumping through these hoops usually involves one or both of them falling asleep on the nursery floor, Lucy snoring peacefully on Logan's chest or Veronica's arm. It's sweet, yes, but horribly uncomfortable. Logan keeps threatening to send Lucy his chiropractor bill. Lucy gurgles back at him because she loves when Daddy talks to her like a grownup.

Veronica thinks she likes the house most out of their current situation. That kind of depresses her sometimes. She loves Logan, and she loves Lucy, but the house is really the easiest part to deal with. She looks back on her last year of college and remembers how contemplating moving in with Logan was so hard. She rolls her eyes at her own stupidity. Moving in was easy. Everything that came after, that was the difficult stuff.

Then she looks at Lucy and Logan sleeping on the floor in the nursery and she has a hard time figuring out what's so hard about it.

* * *

Thanksgiving that year is a total disaster. Wallace, Mac, and Dick come over. Dick is slightly drunk and Wallace is depressed because his girlfriend dumped him and Mac seems slightly terrified of Lucy, who has decided to extend her midnight scream session into a 24 hour scream session.

"How is she not passed out yet?" Mac wonders, staring at the one-year-old in sheer awe (and fear). "I mean, Jesus, how does anyone have that kind of lung capacity?"

Logan grins smarmily. "She gets it from me."

Logan's pretty much proud of everything Lucy does, ever, which Veronica sometimes finds sweet. Sometimes.

"Logan!" she screeches from the kitchen, where she's attempting to mash potatoes. "Can. You. Please. DO SOMETHING?"

Logan is way too calm for her today. He drops down onto the floor in front of Lucy's little baby seat and grins real big at her. "Hey, you. How would you feel about closing the mouth for a little bit? Think that could work for you?"

Lucy pauses for about a millisecond, then opens her mouth wide and starts wailing again. Dick and Wallace both groan from the couch. "I need a beer." They say it simultaneously, which makes Logan laugh out loud.

"See, kiddo? Barely a year old and already driving people to alcoholism. You're on the right track."

Finally, Lucy seems to realize that Daddy is speaking to her like a grownup. And then she realizes that she _likes _this. So she shuts up with the screaming and Wallace and Dick cheer.

"Wow," Mac says, still awestruck. "And she's not even winded."

"FUCK!"

The shouted swear drifts in from the kitchen, and everyone looks over. "Ronnie!" Dick yells. "Watch your language."

"I swear to God, Dick—"

"Babe, do you need help?" Logan calls out, turning away from Lucy momentarily.

"No. No help. I've got this, I swear. Just having some difficulties; haven't cooked any big meals in this kitchen yet."

Veronica has banned everyone from the kitchen, and they're all more than happy to oblige. But Logan obviously can't help it, because a little while later, while Dick chatters to Lucy amicably in front of the TV, he wanders in.

"Uh, V?"

"What, Logan?"

"Um. The oven."

"What about it, Logan?"

"It's, uh, on fire."

A few seconds later, the smoke alarm starts going off and Logan dives for the fire extinguisher and Veronica screeches at Wallace, Dick and Mac to get the baby outside, _now_. Then she sits down in the middle of her huge kitchen and bawls for a few minutes while Logan sprays white foam everywhere.

"Hey, it's okay," he tries to console her, but she barely listens, just keeps crying. "It's not a big deal, Veronica. Don't get upset."

"I—I wanted it to be perfect!" she sobs out. "I just wanted things to be _nice _for once! Is that too much to ask?"

"It is nice, V. It's really nice. Look, the stuffing's okay. And that pudding pie I helped you make, we can have that for dessert. Lucy can throw some at Dick. You know you'll love that."

Veronica starts to get control of her sobs. She looks up at him with wide, wet eyes that look so much like Lucy's it's scary. "Can—can I throw some at Dick, too?"

Logan grins brilliantly. "Of course you can. Do you think I'd deny you that?"

* * *

Christmas is worse than Thanksgiving.

The previous Christmas, Lucy was still in the hospital, and everything was scary and tense and emotional. This year, Logan vows that they will have the perfect Christmas.

She realizes after that he's making the same mistake she did at Thanksgiving. Striving for perfection is a great recipe for disaster.

No one comes over, because while Logan says it would be fine for her family to come, she tells him that this is a time for _their _family. And his face lights up when she says that.

The next day, he wakes up with the flu and refuses to admit it.

He runs around like a maniac all day on Christmas Eve, babbling about Santa and elves to Lucy while trying to suppress his coughs and sneezes. He trips and knocks over the Christmas tree while trying to hang tinsel over the mantle. He puts two presents in front of Lucy and allows her to peek inside the wrapping paper, even though she really has no idea what he wants her to do and just shreds it and stuffs it in her mouth. He makes Christmas cookies, even though Lucy throws more than she eats of them and the sight of food has been turning his stomach. He puts on Christmas carols and smiles so wide when Lucy screeches along to them, singing a tune only she understands.

Veronica loves all this, she does. But she follows him around while he runs around and tries to get him to _stop. _To rest. "You're sick, Logan," she growls at him.

"No, I'm not. It's just a cold."

"You can barely keep your head up. You look like you're going to keel over."

He glares at her. "God, don't ruin this for me, Veronica. Don't ruin this for Lucy."

And Veronica tries to figure out just how shebecame the evil witch who tried to steal Christmas. And she leaves him alone about it.

Until the next day, when Lucy wakes her up at 5:23 a.m., screeching merrily cause she knows she gets to eat more wrapping paper. She assumes that Logan ran out to do something else Santa-y and carries Lucy into the kitchen for her bottle. Then she screeches not-so-merrily when she finds Logan unconscious on the floor.

And that's how she winds up spending Lucy's second Christmas on Earth in the hospital. Again.

Emergency rooms aren't fun places on Christmas. They're sad and lonely and depressing, because who wants to be at a hospital on Christmas? Lucy strikes up an incomprehensible conversation with a woman sitting next to them who's not injured, but deathly pale and equally melancholy. The woman smiles weakly at Lucy but doesn't say much, until the baby gets bored and starts tugging on Veronica's hair. She barely notices, because she's searching the crowded waiting room for a doctor or a nurse, anyone that can tell her anything.

"You can't have that baby in here," a bitchy nurse tells her, and she fights the urge to deck the woman. Hard.

"Well, why don't I leave her with my fiancée? Oh wait, that's right. Because he's in the _hospital. _Where I am. Waiting for someone to tell me if he's okay. Think you could help me with that?"

The nurse's sour expression doesn't falter. "She can't be in here, Miss. I'm sorry."

Veronica's too scared to cause a huge scene right now, so she calls her father and asks him in a small voice if he can come take Lucy home with him. "They won't let her in here, Dad, and I can't leave—"

"Veronica, where are you? What's going on?"

"I'm—I'm at the hospital."

"What happened?"

"I—I don't know. Logan's sick, I just—I don't know yet."

"I'm on my way."

When she apologizes later for ruining his Christmas, he just hugs her tight and shakes his head. "I'm spending Christmas with my granddaughter. How is that ruining anything?" He pulls away and looks her in the eyes carefully. "Call me as soon as you hear anything about Logan, okay?"

"O—Okay."

"I called Mac on the way over, she's coming to sit with you. Just stay calm, okay? Everything's going to be alright."

"If you say so."

Some dumb fuck starts strumming a guitar and singing carols in the waiting room sometime after her father leaves, and Veronica has to physically keep herself from yelling at him to shut up. Luckily, when Mac arrives, she does it for her.

"Oh dear God, no. Not carols in a hospital. Please." The guy looks sheepish as he looks around and sees everyone teary-eyed and wistful, and mumbles an apology before turning to face the wall.

"I don't know what I'd do without you, Mac," Veronica tells her, and then she gets quiet because she's thinking about what she'd do without Logan. And now she wants desperately to clutch Lucy to her and hold her tight because damn, that kid can be comforting sometimes.

A doctor calls out Logan's name a little while later, and they both launch themselves out of their chairs and charge the guy. He looks mildly frightened, but remains professional. "I'm sorry to keep you waiting, we're having a very busy Christmas day, and we're kinda short-handed—"

"Yeah, don't care," Mac snaps. "Is Logan okay?" Veronica is so grateful for her because words are sticking in her throat, crowding around worry and fear and sadness.

"He's fine. We're giving him fluids, some vitamins—it really was just a nasty flu, the kind you need to stay in bed for. He also clipped his head on something when he fell—you said you found him in the kitchen, probably a table or counter. He needed about 6 stitches and he has a mild concussion, but once he gets his strength back up, we'll release him."

He's groggy in the bed, when she steps behind the curtain that's separating him from the other inhabitants of the room. She should be relieved, should be crying tears of joy, that he's fine, he's okay, he's blinking at her and giving her a small, apologetic smile. But she's not. She's just scared. Really, really, scared.

"Hey," Logan says as she inches closer. "You okay?"

She doesn't look at him. "I'm not the one who passed out."

"Veronica, I'm sorry, I'm really—"

"I don't know if I can do this, Logan."

"Do what?" He's scared now, too, and he's so pale, and her heart squeezes painfully as she has to convince herself that he's just sick. She's not doing that to him, it's the flu.

"Do—do this." She takes a big, steadying breath. "God, I need you so much, and you have no idea how much that scares me. I can't take care of Lucy on my own, I can't, I need you, and I've never needed anybody like this, not ever, and—"

"God, Veronica, it's okay to need me. I'm always going to be here. It's okay."

And now there are hot, angry tears streaming down her face as she glares at him. "No, you're not, Logan! You're not always going to be here, okay? God, what if you had hit your head harder? What if you had—"

"That's what this is about? Veronica, I'm fine!"

"Yeah, but you almost weren't, and I—I can't deal with that!"

"I'm sorry, okay? I swear, I'll take better care of myself, I'll—do everything I can to make sure I'm always here, for you and for Lucy. You know that, V. You know I'd never leave you willingly."

She won't look at him again. "I can't do this. I—I can't need you this much."

He's pissed, she knows it. But he's mostly heartbroken. "What are you going to do, Veronica? Are you going to run away? Leave me, leave Lucy? Or stay and just stonewall me, shut me out and keep me away from you? Is it sad that I don't know which I'd prefer?"

There's not a lot of hope in her voice when she answers; but there's a hell of a lot of determination, and it's enough to make him believe, just a little bit. "I'm—I'm going to try, okay? I'm going to try really hard."

"To what? To stay? To let me in? Cause I've gotta tell ya, I've heard this speech before, Veronica. Only now, there's so much more at stake than just you and me. This is everything now, don't you get that?"

She gets it. It's why she's scared. It's scary as hell starting a family anytime; it's scarier when you're 23 years old and you once had your whole life ahead of you, a whole future you could barely comprehend, and now you have a baby. And it's got her scared shitless that they're her everything, Lucy and Logan, because what if she loses one of them? She won't survive that, never, and she knows it, and it scares her so much.

She can't stop being scared. But she's going to try. Because being scared could cost her everything, and that's exactly what she's scared of. And man, does that make her head spin.

Veronica looks at him now and puts all the hope she can in her voice. "I won't leave, Logan. Never. And I—I won't shut you out, not if I can help it." He still looks wary, but he can't help looking relieved.

"But I can't marry you."

She thinks she hears his heart breaking, and that breaks hers right in half.

* * *

Things get better. Slowly, but surely, they do.

Her life tends to go up and down a lot, up and down, good and bad, peaceful and tragic. She clings to up, good and peaceful and squares her shoulders against down, bad and tragic, and she makes it through with minimal damage to her and her family. For a while, anyway.

The job that Logan had wanted to grab right after graduation but didn't because of all of the birth problems opens up again, and suddenly he's happier than ever. He had taken her marriage refusal hard, eyes shiny and sad whenever they looked at her, and sometimes she wondered if he hated her a little bit. His face still lights up at the sight of Lucy, but it doesn't always beam at Veronica anymore, and she calls herself stupid for being jealous. But he, like her, had always been stubborn, and they're both fighting to do this, to keep it together, keep their family together, and he's not going to give up.

The job is with a social services agency; and suddenly, Logan develops a passion for saving kids. He throws himself into it, visiting broken home after broken home, and he works his ass off and he comes home beaming with success. "Janie's got an aunt in San Diego who's willing to take her," he tells Veronica, speaking enthusiastically to her for the first time in months. "I was afraid they'd send her to the group home for a while. She's so tiny, she'd get trampled in there."

Veronica's naïve enough at first to believe that his job could save their relationship. She doesn't know that months later, she'll be rolling her eyes at her own stupidity again.

Her own career is quiet, calm—she works at the small newspaper downtown, and she loves it, to her amazement. She'd wanted bigger, better things a year or so ago, something more engaging and exciting, but now? She loves the people she works with, the satisfaction of rising quickly in her small chain of success, the fact that its simple enough to take a backseat to her other newfound, surprising love: motherhood.

Lucy has already taken her first few steps, and she's been wobbling all over, and Veronica really loves nothing more than to follow her around and watch her explore. She reads books to her and watches her repeat the words slowly and carefully, disjointed sentences coming right after because after all, she's Logan Echolls' daughter and she'll always have a way with words. Veronica had feared Lucy's first words would be some kind of swear or sarcastic jibe. She felt completely, unbelievably happy when it was Mama, followed soon by Daddy.

She takes Lucy to the beach, which is a mistake because Lucy loves to eat the sand. She helps her find some seashells and makes sure she doesn't eat those, too. She takes Lucy to work with her and everyone fawns over her because she really is the cutest baby ever and Veronica is unspeakably proud. And she's happy. And she's not so scared anymore. Not that much.

Lucy is growing and Logan and Veronica are right there with her, still growing and changing and loving. But not all of Logan's cases are working out too well and then he stops talking about work at all anymore, preferring to keep his attention focused on Lucy and Veronica and whatever they had learned that day, whatever they had discovered. And with the way his face still lights up at the sight of his daughter, she doesn't think that anything might be that wrong.

And then she finds out that Logan got a new job. He doesn't work for the agency; he works for a hospital in San Diego, because he'd been such a success at the agency. And every week now he confronts parents who beat their kids into hospital beds and he gets the kids away from them. And every week he becomes more and more determined to save every kid he gets assigned to help. And every week he gets cases that can't be helped, kids that can't be protected, just because of higher authorities who believe in second chances and politics and the ass-backwards system. And every day a little bit more of him breaks for those kids.

Veronica doesn't know what to do. She can't tell him to quit—knows it would be useless, he'd never quit, ever. She can't tell him that he can't save everybody, because he knows that. And she can't tell him it's okay that he can't save everybody, because he hates it.

"Daddy," Lucy pleads. "Play now?"

"Sorry, Luce. I'm really tired." His face still lights up, but it fades more and more, and his job is killing him, and Veronica doesn't know what to do.

"No?" Lucy doesn't get why Daddy doesn't play that much anymore. With the hours and the exhaustion and the sadness, he doesn't have the energy anymore, but she doesn't understand that.

"Let's let Daddy nap for a while, okay, Lucy Lou?" Veronica pipes up. "Then he'll play."

Lucy's lower lip trembles, but she doesn't cry. She lets her mother carry her away, fitting her face into her neck. Nearly two, and already good at hiding her emotions. God.

He's not sleeping later when Veronica comes into their room once Lucy's fallen asleep. She stands at the foot of the bed and looks at him, disappointed and sad.

"I don't know what I'm going to do," he says roughly, and she can do nothing else but climb into bed beside him and hold him tight.

"I don't know either," she tells him. "But you have to do something, Logan."

When they have sex that night, Veronica's desperately trying to find it—find something, find the pieces of him that she loves, those shattered bits of fire and ice and love and devotion. She feels Logan clinging, Logan longing, Logan reassuring himself that she's there, she's still there. And she feels Logan bracing himself for when she won't be, and she tells herself to prove him wrong, prove herself wrong—she won't leave.

* * *

When Davie Baker dies, Logan doesn't come home.

Davie Baker was the son of city councilman James Baker. Davie Baker was admitted into Logan's hospital a week ago with multiple rib fractures, three broken fingers, and a concussion. Bruising on the legs and torso suggested that he'd been kicked repeatedly. Davie Baker was nine years old.

Veronica only knows this from going through Logan's briefcase.

When the hospital had admitted Davie, his father had told them that he had been in a fight at school. When Logan didn't believe him, he showed James Baker the evidence of healed fractures in his arms and ribs that had gone untreated and had been present for years. He told James Baker that he would make sure he'd never touch his son again.

The next day, James and Davie Baker had left the hospital, and Logan was called to a disciplinary hearing at the hospital.

Veronica didn't know all this, not until the news of Davie's murder (subdural hematoma caused by harsh contact with a blunt object) and James' arrest splashed across the news, and Logan's boss had called her up to let her know how Logan had taken it.

Veronica calls in sick to work that day. She gives the babysitter the day off. She sits in front of the TV with Lucy in her lap and she hugs her warmth to her and she waits for him to come home.

Lucy is almost asleep that night when Veronica decides to walk along the beach.

The two-year-old wakes right up when Mommy tells her they're going for a walk. She likes to look at the stars and give the constellations names, ignoring the names that Logan had tried to teach her once because she can't pronounce them that well. She calls Orion Daddy and she calls Leo Mommy and she picks out the stars in between and she calls them Lucy. She points up at the sky and says, "Look! Daddy's up there!" and Veronica feels herself tear up.

She's nodding off again when they find Logan. Sprawled across the sand, smelling like a brewery, Veronica wonders briefly just how long he's been there before anger takes over. She forces him to get up and follow them back to the house and he does so without saying anything, so she knows that this is bad. She puts Lucy in her crib and she flicks on the baby monitor and she goes out to where Logan's waiting for her to scream at him.

"You have _no idea _how worried I've been," she starts in a low, dangerous voice. He smirks at her.

"Sorry." And from his tone, she knows he's not sorry at all. She wants to slap him for that.

"What the hell is wrong with you, Logan?"

"Gee, V, have you watched the news lately?" His smirk won't go away; and this is the most sober she's ever seen him while drunk. "I know you've been going through my shit, and you're a smart girl. You can make the connections."

"You can't do this, Logan. You _can't. _You have a family now. You have a _daughter. _You can't just go out and get drunk or shut everyone out whenever things go bad." Veronica crosses her arms over her chest. "I—I know that your job is difficult for you, I know that, but you—you need help, you need to let me help you, or get help from someone, or give this up, because it's not—"

"Right, Veronica. Because you'd totally give this up."

She sniffs. "You _know _what I've given up." And it's the wrong thing to say, completely the wrong thing to say.

"I never asked you to do any of that. I told you I'd stay home—I told you you could do whatever you wanted, be whatever you wanted. You chose this—I didn't get you pregnant on purpose, Veronica. I never asked for this. I never asked for you to give anything up." The smirk is gone, replaced by all the insecurities that this life is built on.

"I know that, okay? I know that. I made this choice, and I'm happy with it. I like our lives. But I am not going to let you do this. Not to me, and not to Lucy. Neither of us deserve this."

"So divorce me," Logan spits out, and then he laughs, and it is the most disturbing thing Veronica's ever heard. "Oh wait. You _can't. _We're not married. Isn't that convenient, though? Your own little contingency plan. So neat and tidy—things get tough, Logan can't deal, just grab the baby and go, no legal messes to deal with. You're just so darn _smart, _Mars."

And that's when Veronica realizes that he _wants _her to leave—wants her to hurt him, wants her to destroy him, because he thinks he deserves it. Thinks he deserves it for Davie, for all those kids that keep on getting hit, for not playing with Lucy when she wants him to. Realizes that he's expecting it, waiting for it, hoping for it.

And she lifts her head and she proves him wrong.

"Go to bed, Logan. Sleep this off."

He smiles wickedly. "Ah, packing the bags in the middle of the night, huh? Let me just go tell Lucy I love her."

He does, and then he goes to sleep. And she stays.

She wakes him up bright and early, after calling her father to come pick up Lucy for the day. She ignores his surprised, groggy look and she throws him in the shower. She pours water and coffee down his throat until he's throwing up over and over again. Then she pours some more until he can sit up straight and stop groaning.

Then she throws the application for the University of San Diego School of Law at him.

"What's this?" he wants to know.

"This is what you're going to do," she tells him, and he looks at her with such fierce love in his eyes, and she has no more doubts.

* * *

It's not easy. Not by a long shot. But they get through. And Logan gets better. Slowly, but surely, he does.

He gets better because he feels like he's _doing _something. And Veronica gets better because she's helping him do it, in her own way. And they get better because they're surviving, and neither of them are leaving or running. Because there's a little girl that likes to name constellations for them, and she makes them want to be as good as those stars, and when Lucy's with them, they believe they can be.

It's not easy. It's never easy. But sometimes, it's not so hard.

The day he graduates from law school, it's one of the happiest days of her life. Because she's not thinking about the fact that she never got to go to graduate school, that she never got the bigger and better things she might've been destined for.

She's thinking about Logan, and Lucy, and their cute, little house that she likes. And she's thinking that they're everything now, and she never wants to let them go.

Veronica asks Logan to marry her later, and when his face lights up, she feels so proud.


End file.
